


What I Want, I'm Ready to Name

by Jedi Buttercup (jedibuttercup)



Category: The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.
Genre: F/M, Light-Hearted, Love Triangles, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-21
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2019-05-23 20:32:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14940899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedibuttercup/pseuds/Jedi%20Buttercup
Summary: Dixie Cousins was the very opposite of Amanda's entire… everything.  But they had one, well, two very important things in common.





	What I Want, I'm Ready to Name

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ultra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ultra/gifts).



> Set sometime during the course of the series; plot partially inspired by the "I now pronounce you claimed and filed"/"pardners" triangle plot of the "Paint Your Wagon" movie. :)

"Seventy-thirty," Amanda Wickwire said firmly, crossing her arms over her sensible shirtwaist. She'd learned that she had to be firm about dickering with folks that fancied themselves sophisticated if she expected the other party to take her seriously; otherwise they often took one look at her trousers and lack of frills and thought they were facing some hay-for-brains country cousin.

"Seventy-thirty?" her opponent replied in arch, mock-offended tones. "I thought you said you were here to discuss a _joint_ venture."

Wrapped in a flimsy, lace-edged robe, with her hair a tousled fall of blonde curls and a sultry pout to her mouth that echoed the exposed upper curve of her bosom, Dixie Cousins was the very opposite of Amanda's entire ... everything. But they had one ... well, two ... very important things in common: both of them were independent women who would never let a suitor dictate their choices for them, and both had fallen irrevocably for the charms of one Brisco County, Junior.

Unlike most men of the West, the bounty hunter had proven himself perfectly willing to respect their agency in personal matters. _Like_ most men of the West, however, he had also proved to stick around scarcely long enough for such choices to matter. Maybe she _was_ crazy for adding those two facts together and coming up with her appeal to the other woman, but if it worked....

"Seventy-thirty," Amanda conceded, "when we all happen to be in the same town at the same time, which we both know isn't going to be all that often. I'll get his undivided attention when he's in Sutter Creek or San Francisco when you're not at the Horseshoe Club, but you'll get his undivided attention when you cross paths anywhere else, and I think it's pretty clear _that_ equation's weighted in your favor. So, seventy-thirty when we're all in town together seems perfectly equitable to _me_."

Dixie's perfect brows arched, and she considered Amanda for a long moment. Then a wry smile quirked her mouth and she lounged back further in her chair, casting a deliberate glance toward the rumpled bedclothes. "Fair enough," she said. "That is ... _if_ he were to agree. What makes you think he'd even be interested in such an arrangement?"

Her tone of voice implied that she knew very well Brisco was interested in _her_ , it was the rest of the scheme she was questioning. Amanda took a deep breath to calm her instinctively irritable response and gave the other woman a tense smile in return. "Why don't you tell me? You were there the second time we met, when he tried to shake you off and tell me that things weren't what they looked like." At the time, she'd thought he was an outlaw and gave him the brush off for it, but between that and the kiss he'd given her later that day ... well, he'd made a hell of an impression.

Dixie's mouth pursed a little, and her eyebrows lifted further at the challenge. "And if I told you things _are_ what they looked like, and he was just saving face in front of Big Smith?"

Even if her gesture toward the bed earlier hadn't made the implication perfectly clear, Amanda wouldn't have needed to hear it. She wasn't blind, and there was a reason she was in Dixie's room above the Horseshoe Club that morning after finding Brisco's room empty the evening before.

The thing was, that might have mattered to her if she was actually after a stay-at-home husband ... but Amanda had spent most of her adult life cleaning up after her head-in-the-clouds father and his various experimental and romantic misadventures; she didn't need yet another full-time charge on her hands. What she _was_ interested in was a respectable-seeming situation to discourage all the idiots who either tried to paw her or squawked about her lack of chaperone, and if that security came in a package that made her pulse race every time they met? So much the better. Add to that that Brisco had already made friends with her father, and why would Amanda have any reason to hold _his_ other interests against him?

"I'd say you weren't there when he helped rescue my father from some of Bly's other men," she replied wryly. "Or most of the other times we've crossed paths. The problem as I see it isn't that he's not interested; the problem is that he's skittish about being tied down. But who's tying anyone here? This is about all of us getting what we want, not anyone losing their freedom."

She almost hadn't agreed to come back to San Francisco with her father when he'd decided to raise funds for his 'inner space suit'; she hadn't imagined he'd find any trouble at the Westerfield Club. But trouble _had_ come for him in the shape of Jack Randolph. Luckily, Brisco had been nearby, and his appreciative behavior after she'd helped rescue his friend Lord Bowler from the lake that used to be Gravesend had been enough to convince her it was worth sticking around a little longer. He'd looked at her the way he'd looked at her father's rocket when he'd called it _the coming thing_ and talked to her like she was absolutely worth as much attention as Mr. Poole's fancy East Coast lawyer of a sister. And none of their encounters since had given her any reason to think differently of him.

Dixie's teeth flashed in a smile. "Fair enough," she repeated, warmly. "Though if you haven't yet figured out there are more pleasurable definitions of being tied down ... well, I think you're missing out."

Amanda couldn't keep her eyes from straying back to the bed at that, and the wrinkled stockings looped around the upper posts, and her cheeks grew warm. Okay, maybe she _was_ a little out of her league on that particular subject. But if she'd learned nothing else from helping her father all these years, she knew if you wanted big rewards, you needed to take big risks. 

"If you say so," she managed.

Dixie gave a low chuckle. "So, we've covered Brisco; what gave you the idea to ask _me_?"

It was a good thing Amanda was already blushing, because this was the weakest part of her reasoning and she knew it. But she'd had to learn a lot about mining law in the course of her father's work, and thanks to him she'd also seen enough of Dixie's performances to have practically memorized the centerpiece of the woman's routine. The idea of combining the two had just popped into her head the last time she'd caught Brisco humming the song and hadn't left her alone since. 

"You know that song of yours? 'He's worth a fancy fortune, but it's not in cash'?"

"Ah," Dixie said, realization sparking in her brown eyes. "You mean the part about, 'who's gonna help me file my claim?'"

"That's the idea."

"An unusually creative interpretation of that verse, but it _is_ hard to argue with an arrangement that would let me have my cake and eat it, too. But why propose it in the first place?"

Amanda sighed. "You don't know – well, I suppose you _would_ know how guys out here can get around unmarried women. That's actually how I met Brisco, trying to punch one who wouldn't stop trying to lay hands on me. I ended up hitting _him_ instead ... and instead of getting angry, he flirted with me."

"Sounds like Brisco," Dixie tsk'ed, shaking her head. "When _I_ met him, he was pretending to be an outlaw who'd been pretending to be a salesman, all so he could arrest my boyfriend. I knew then that something even bigger than Big had come into my life, even if it didn't exactly work out like I planned. I might have snapped him up then anyway ... if I could have seen myself sitting back and playing second fiddle to his cause."

Amanda snorted. Maybe they _did_ have more than just two things in common. "Too bad my father's second, third, and fourth wives never made that calculation. I kept telling him he needed to find another woman as interested in building things as he is, but he kept charming ladies who got dazzled by his enthusiasm and thought he was going to make them rich, and meanwhile it was up to me to make sure he didn't lose his glasses or spend all the food budget on nitrocellulose again. I'm a little more optimistic about the Schwenke sisters, but ... well, I guess we'll see."

"I see," Dixie replied; and something in the way her expression shifted told Amanda that she really _did_ see: Amanda was under no delusions about her place in Brisco's priorities, but unlike Dixie, she saw that as a positive factor, not a negative one. "Do you intend to present him with a finished contract, then? Or would you like me to, ah, propose it to him first?"

Amanda winced. "That part, I wasn't so sure about. I mean, how do you ask a man something like that? So I thought I'd ask you if you had any ideas."

Dixie laughed again, then stood and offered one daintily manicured hand. "I've always said I'd never settle for being less than first in a man's life ... but I'd never been offered an opportunity like _this_ , either. Very well. To a joint claim on Brisco County, Junior. As long as we can add in the option to, let's say, buy the other out if the situation ever changes?"

"To joint shares," Amanda agreed, and shook on it with a warm, relieved smile.

+

(Out in the hallway, standing before the door with a hand upraised to knock, a man in a buff, patterned vest over a blue shirt and tan trousers stared at the thin wooden panel in front of him in bemusement. A tray filled with breakfast drooped in his other hand, half-forgotten; his expression seemed caught between dismay and pleased amazement at the muted conversation carrying from within.

"You know," he said in considering tones, "I always did say I was looking for the coming thing...."

...Comet was _never_ going to let him live this down.)


End file.
